Peter Broderick, Efterklang @ Bottom of the Hill (review, photos)
Last night Peter Broderick and Efterklang (myspace) played at the Bottom of the Hill. Locals Cloud Archive opened.
Cloud Archive were made up of a laptopist/ sequencer, guitar player, bass player, and drummer. They put on a nice set of post rock including some aptly integrated samples of people talking, a la Godspeed! You Black Emperor. There’s a certain modality and tonality that ‘alternative’ radio friendly ‘dark’ bands tread in and I found Cloud Archive using that sound a bit too much for my liking.
Peter Broderick was up second and he was the main person I was there to see. I’d really liked the lush folk of his most recent release, Home and I was looking forward to seeing him live.
Set up on the far left side of the stage, behind his keyboard, he started his first song with guitar and vocals, much like many singer-songwriters. The direction of the set quickly changed, though, when he tore off his guitar and grabbed his violin, the guitar part he just played set up in loop already. With his fiddle, he came right up to the edge of the stage, as if he was daring to go down into the audience and play. He didn’t…this time.
Throughout his set he used his loop pedal to interesting and good effect–I’ve seen enough performers that utilize the loop pedal to realize that it’s not how proficient they are at using it technically, but how they use it artistically that makes or breaks it. He ended up looping guitar, violin, vocals, percussion, and casio keyboard with nice results.
He had a sense of juxtaposing the beautiful and the ugly at certain times of his set. He’d build up a cacophony of loops only to break them off and go into a subdued fingerpicked guitar song. Or he’d build up a gorgeous loop only to layer two or three sets of his talking over it.
In the end, it was a beautiful set, but moreso than that, it was charming and intriguing.
I’d bought Efterklang’s most recent album, Parades, after the ladies working at a Taipei record store played it while I shopped. It was intriguing but I didn’t listen to it enough to really get absorbed in it. Nevertheless, I was curious to check them out.
The Danish seven piece crowded the stage after a bit too long of a break. The singer was front-left, also playing percussion. Peter Broderick was back on stage to the right on vocals and violin and, occasionally, guitar. There was another guitar player, a drummer/ trumpet/ trombone/ vocals, a bass player, a keyboard player/ laptop guy and keyboard/ flute player.
The main thrust of the set was glitchy electro-organic pop with lots of vocals from many members of the band. The audience, which seemed to have a fair number of their countrymen along with other Europeans, was into it. I enjoyed their set, though by the encore, I was ready to go home and get some sleep.
[...] After Pug, I went over to the Hometapes party to see Peter Broderick, but they were running more than a full band behind, so I took off. I wasn’t too distraught because I got to see him recently. [...]